The Power of Storytelling

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Terry Tempest Williams near her home in Utah. Many of her essays address the power of natural landscapes, especially those of the Southwest.
Terry Tempest Williams near her home in Utah. Many of her essays address the power of natural landscapes, especially those of the Southwest.
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Narrows Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah.
Narrows Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah.
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Arches National Park, Utah.
Arches National Park, Utah.
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A rock lizard.
A rock lizard.
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Bryce Canyon; National Park, Utah.
Bryce Canyon; National Park, Utah.
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Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
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Sandia Mountains, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Sandia Mountains, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Bryce Canyon, National Park, Utah.
Bryce Canyon, National Park, Utah.
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Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona.
Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona.

On a wet and windy morning filled with the smells of rain-soaked earth and eucalyptus, a small group of students, staff and faculty assembles outside Conference Hall 1 at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, Calif. Nursing steaming cups of coffee, they chat about the woman they’ve come to meet — Terry Tempest Williams.

Williams is the author of 14 books, many of them collections of essays about nature and community. She’s a storyteller who uses personal experience and her training as a naturalist to explore how individual and collective health are tied to the health of the land.

“We’re animals — mammals,” she’s fond of saying. “Our deepest memories are of Earth. I think we forget, but reconnect with those ancestral memories when we go out into nature. We remember that everything is interrelated. Nothing stands alone.”

Connection to Place

The daughter of one of the first Mormon families to settle Utah’s Salt Lake Valley and make a living from the land, Williams honed her storytelling and listening skills in the vast, untrammeled wilderness of the Colorado Plateau. She often writes about the Southwest and is probably best known for her sixth book, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. It chronicles the unfolding of two devastating events in Williams’ life — the flooding of her beloved Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge just north of the Great Salt Lake, and the death of her mother from ovarian cancer.

  • Published on Sep 3, 2008
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